Every webmaster dreams of getting so much traffic from the search engines that it tests the boundaries of their web hosting provider's network. Getting your site listed on page one for several relevant search phrases on the major search engines is the key to approaching this level of traffic. Getting there requires some hard work and a little knowledge about search engine optimization. Read on for some search optimization information including five basic elements to elevate your search engine rankings and resulting traffic.

Content is King - If you have done any research on search engine optimization, you are aware of the need to optimize the content of your web pages. Your content must be optimized for the search engines and have optimal usage of your most important relevant keywords and keyword phrases. As you write user friendly content take into consideration you should be optimizing your pages with phrases that best match your overall theme. Search engines prefer this. You can then focus on link popularity and link quality to help drive traffic. We will cover both in a moment.

Key Phrase Optimization - By optimizing your pages with the phrases that best match the overall theme of your site, it will improve the likelihood that users will find your site when searching for content like yours. You should target short multi-word phrases unless your keywords are unique. First, find your optimum keywords and determine their popularity. After optimizing keywords, update all of your meta tags to sparingly use these keyword phrases in the title, description and keyword meta tags

Link Popularity - To improve your rankings and ultimately your traffic, you must increase your link popularity. Link popularity generally refers to the number of links on the internet that reference to your website. If you have no money to use for promoting link popularity, link popularity can generally be increased primarily in two ways. The first method is by exchanging links with other web sites with similar content. The second method is promoting articles that relate to your site, including a link to your site in the article and then publishing the article on as many article directory sites as possible. Employing both tactics is the most effective; however, the latter is extremely effective because it creates multiple one-way links back to your website.

Article Publishing - Almost all webmasters frequently seek out good site content - remember content is king. They either lack the writing skills or lack the innovation or initiative to write the content themselves. Webmasters with financial resources available often hire ghost writers. Those without money look to article directories to obtain some of their content. This demand for content by other webmasters creates an opportunity for you to promote your site. Writing articles that relate to your content and publishing those articles within article directories ultimately proliferates your link onto other webmaster's sites. Think of the potential here. You are getting a one-way link from every site that posts your article. You also get a link back from every article directory that contains your articles

Link Quality - Remember, link popularity is hugely important, but the quality of those links is equally important. There are two parts to link quality. First, sites that are pointing to your website ideally must have related content. Search engines will give links from sites with related content more value. The second component to link quality is the actual words the other webmaster uses in your link. The intent is to ensure the links pointing back to your website include your most relevant keywords in the link title.

Search engine optimization requires a focus on these five elements. Highly optimizing your website content and obtaining high link popularity from quality links will absolutely help your search engine rankings over time. Of course, as with many things, your level of effort at employing these elements is directly proportional with the results you can expect to get out.